Abraham Lincoln eBook

Your letter of July 23rd reaches me
here, and I beg to express my thanks for your
kind remembrances of me in London.... I am much
interested in learning that you were present at
the time my father made his speech at Cooper Institute.
I, of course, remember the occasion very well,
although I was not present. I was at that time
in the middle of my year at Phillips Exeter Academy,
preparing for the Harvard entrance examination
of the summer of 1860.... After the Cooper
Institute address, my father came to Exeter to see
how I was getting along, and this visit resulted
in his making a number of speeches in New England
on his way and on his return, and at Exeter he
wrote to my mother a letter which was mainly concerned
with me, but which did make reference to these
speeches.... He said that he had had some
embarrassment with these New England speeches, because
in coming East he had anticipated making no speech
excepting the one at the Cooper Institute, and
he had not prepared himself for anything else....
In the later speeches, he was addressing reading audiences
who had, as he thought probable, seen the report of
his Cooper Institute speech, and he was obliged,
therefore, from day to day (he made about a dozen
speeches in New England in all) to bear that fact
in mind.

Sincerely yours,

ROBERT LINCOLN.

(From Judge Nott)

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.,

July 26, 1909.

DEAR PUTNAM:

I consider it very desirable that the
report of Mr. Lincoln’s speech, embodying
the final revision, should be preserved in book form....
The text in the pamphlet now in your hands is authentic
and conclusive. Mr. Lincoln read the proof
both of the address and of the notes. I am
glad that you are to include in your reprint the letters
from Mr. Lincoln, as these letters authenticate this
copy of the address as the copy which was corrected
by him with his own hand....

The preface to the address, written
in September, 1860, has interest because it shows
what we thought of the address at that time....
Your worthy father was, if I remember rightly,
one of the vice-presidents of the meeting....

Yours faithfully,

CHARLES C. NOTT.

(From Cephas Brainerd)

NEW YORK, August 18, 1909.

DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:

I am very glad to learn that there is
good prospect that the real Lincoln Cooper Institute
address, with the evidence in regard to it, will
now be available for the public.... I am glad
also that with the address you are proposing to
print the letters received by Judge Nott from
Mr. Lincoln. One or two of these have, unfortunately,
not been preserved. I recall in one an observation
made by Lincoln to the effect that he “was
not much of a literary man.”

I did not see much of Mr. Lincoln when
he was in New York, as my most active responsibility